Tag Archive for 'Simon Fujiwara'

S’pore Biennale 2011! A final word from our sponsors!

Greetings from Hong Kong!

The Hong Kong International Art Fair (aka Art HK 11) is now in full swing. The RAT, however, cannot so much as swivel his hips after spending an entire day walking around. Which is why, as yet another round of parties take place tonight (including “The David Lachapelle one”, as one remarked), he’s talking in the third person and typing away in his hotel room.

More on the fair in the next post. In the meantime, here’s a bunch of official statements from the not-so-recently concluded Biennale. I know some might think it’s so yesterday, but I thought it was important to have a final word regarding the Fujiwara Incident – from everyone involved.

You might have read some of these from previous news stories, but here are the statements from artist Simon Fujiwara, the curatorial team and the organizers, Singapore Art Museum, in full.  

  Continue reading ‘S’pore Biennale 2011! A final word from our sponsors!’


S’pore Biennale 2011! It’s a wrap! 912,897 visitors!

The Biennale wrapped up over the weekend and they’ve released their visitorship figures to satisfy your craving for numbers.

They’ve put it down to 912,897, which surpassed the organisers’ target of 650,000.

According to the release, that’s broken down into 196,028 for indoor/admitted visitors; 696,709 “outdoor” visitors to The Merlion Hotel and National Museum of Singapore; and 20,160 visitors of “auxiliary and pre-opening events”.

If one remembers the other newspaper’s criticism about attendance figures midway through the event, it went “unless there is a stampede in the next few weeks, the final visitor tally may fall short of the 650,000 target.”

Their figures for this edition are way above 2008’s 505,200 and 2006’s 883,300. Well, maybe there was a stampede during the final few weeks. Nudge nudge wink wink. Continue reading ‘S’pore Biennale 2011! It’s a wrap! 912,897 visitors!’


S’pore Biennale 2011! An update!

Hold on to your seats because we’ve just got some breaking news.

Simon Fujiwara’s controversial work Welcome To The Hotel Munber is now… officially closed.

Erm, as opposed to “temporarily closed”.

Which has been the case for most of the Biennale. And seeing as it’s wrapping up on Sunday…

But anyway, here’s SAM director Tan Boon Hui’s official statement on why it took this long to put a stamp on the decision: Continue reading ‘S’pore Biennale 2011! An update!’


S’pore Biennale 2011! Young art writers programme! Munber bummer!

So where were we again?

Oh right, the Simon Fujiwara thing.

As much as I’m rooting for SAM’s efforts of pushing for contemporary art, I just have to say this (rather belatedly).

Major Fail.

If, like me, you were out of the country last week and missed out on all the Hotel Munber action (and the rest of the non-SB stuff ), you can read an interview with Fujiwara here.

The actual censorship is the biggest boo-boo of course. But there’s also a subtler side-effect of this rather disappointing act.

The whole incident and the issue of censorship has effectively overshadowed the rest of the works at SB2011.

This morning, I had a quick FB chat with one of the Biennale artists who bemoaned that now everyone’s been asking him about the Hotel Munber issue.

I’m pretty sure the buzz over the censored work is not the kind of buzz organisers (not to mention the artists of the other works) would’ve wanted for the biennale.

***

Anyway, the second part of this post is to introduce something that’s long overdue. As SB2011’s partner for the Young Art Writers Programme, we’ve been publishing some writings by students who participated in a series of art writing workshops a couple of weeks ago. Every week, you’ll see a couple of them in TODAY.

(For those who’ve missed previous articles, you can check them out here, here, here, and here.

I’ll be posting some of the works produced from the “creative writing” side of the workshops in the coming posts – some poems, short journal-type entries, etc – and we’ll continue posting the nicer ones as and when they come in.

I’m still hoping that we get more entries that deal with works by Singaporean artists because we haven’t gotten any. Sigh.

That’s not to say the contributions aren’t good. Do have a read.

Now if only some brave student would actually submit something on Fujiwara’s work…